GPLv3, Belfast, 19th January 2006

These are the notes I used for a talk given on the 19th of January 2006
after the release of the first public draft of GPLv3 and the launch of the
GPLv3 public consultation process. The place was Northern Ireland, at the
monthly meeting of a GNU/Linux user
group in Belfast.

...and I'm just coming back from the launch event of the public
consulation for drafting version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which
I'll report on now.

The stakes

The GNU GPL is by far the most used free software licence.

Today, 100s of millions of computer users are relying on the GPL to
protect their rights to help themselves and to collaborate with others.

Not everyone shares the priority of spreading freedom. As well as
friends, we have enemies, we have friends with multiple personalities, and
we have users who would exploit the software if the opportunity arose. The
strength of GPLv2 is shown by how it makes these groups work together.

There are two indicators that GPLv2 is solid:

It has only been taken to court twice, as far as I remember. If lawyers
thought it was not solid, it would have been taken to court a lot more
frequently.

The two times it was brought before a court, we know it was solid
because the judge said it was solid.

For making changes to GPLv2, the golden rule is: do no harm.

The changes

In general, I think the changes are quite moderate, probably less
controversial than some people expected.

Software patents

GPLv2 had a tame patent clause. Today we're seeing some new free software
licences with aggressive patent clauses, but these may backfire in practice.
For example, if a patent holder sues me, and my licence penalises me if I
initiate patent litigation, then I'm punished if I counter-sue. In that
situation, the free software developer would be restricted, and the
proprietary software developer would not be restricted. So GPLv3 has a
strengthened patent clause, but it's still conservative. If we learn that a
more aggressive clause would be better, that can be changed in GPLv4, I
suppose, but for now, we have to make sure we do no harm.

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)

The draft defines "Complete Corresponding Source Code" as
including any codes necessary for using the software, modified or
unmodified, so DRM is fine for personal use, but using it to restrict the
freedoms that GPL is there to protect is not possible.

The draft also says that the covered software is not a "technical
protection mechanism", and that the software cannot be used for the
illegal invasion of privacy. These are both legal hacks, the first is a
response to some specific legislation in the USA and the EU. The second
looks like it's just stating the obvious, but what it actually does is it
gives copyright holders the ability to enforce privacy laws when other
parties neglect to do so.

Licence compatibility

As far as I know, every copyleft licence written after GPLv2 has been
incompatible with GPLv2, except for those which have explicit compatibility
clauses. Sometimes this is because of a matter of form, such as the
warranty disclaimer being written differently, and sometimes it was a matter
of substance, such as the addition of patent retaliation clauses. GPLv3
addresses this by saying that, provided the freedoms that the GPLv3 grants
are left in-tact, copyright holders can write their own warranties and
patent clauses. Some free software licences will still be incompatible, but
two licences which Eben Moglen mentioned would now be compatible are the
Apache Software License and the Eclipse Public License.

Internationalisation

There may be translations of GPLv3, or maybe not. Translating into
another language creates a lot of room for errors, and makes reviewing the
text more difficult. If there are translations, the strategy will probably
be to have the translations only valid in countries where that language is
an official language. This way, the impact of problems can be greatly
limited.

Complexity and length

Everyone would like to see the GPL become shorter and simpler, but instead
GPLv3 is longer and more complex. This is regretted, and if anyone has
suggestions for shortening the licence, they will be very seriously
considered, but the #1 priority has to be that the licence works. It has to
have no loopholes, no shakey-bits, and it has to be enforceable in the legal
systems of every country.

Those are the main changes in substance. There are also lesser changes
which are mere clarifications.

The coming process

Secrecy and transparency

Until now, there was a lot of secrecy. Almost no one outside of FSF saw
the private draft of GPLv3.

One issue was that Richard Stallman didn't want to be lobbied.

Another was that he wanted to remain flexible to change his mind - he
didn't want to be restricted by previous statements.

From this point on, things will be done out in the open. For one example,
comments, and the rationale for acting or not acting on them, will be
published online.

Timeline

The coming consultation process is scheduled for approximately 12 months.
No dates have been set in stone, and the final version may take more or less
than 12 months.

There will probably be two more drafts published during the year.

The conference I'm coming from was only the first international GPLv3
conference, there should be at least two more: one in Latin America, and
probably one in Europe, India, and East Asia, but the details aren't
set.

Information flow

FSF have a website where comments on the public draft should be submitted:
gplv3.fsf.org.

The comments will be reviewed and the duplicates merged. I think this
work is done by the FSF's Associate
Members (a program like FSFE's Fellowship).

These are then passed on to the discussion committees. The discussion
committees are representatives of GPL stake holders. One committee has
members of Debian, the Mozilla Foundation, the Apache Foundation, Software
in the Public Interest, etc. Another has CEO's of companies. Another, I
think, has lawyers. These committees debate the issues, the licence changes
which are possible, and the reasons for and against.

The results of these debates will be passed to FSF for a final decision on
whether something will be addressed by making a change to the draft of the
licence, or if it will be addressed by attaching an examplanation for why
the licence was not changed for this issue.

What we can do

That's what will happen to the information after it is entered into
gplv3.fsf.org, now the bit we can work on: what happens to the information
before it is entered.

Raise awareness among stake holders, so that no one is surprised in a
year's time, and everyone gets to have their say.

Read up and become a source for information. A lot of the comments I've
heard so far are about parts of the GPL that have not been changed. So a lot of the people who are
reading the GPLv3 draft have not read GPLv2.